Valar Morghulis
by Min Daae
Summary: Arya and Sandor, on the road to nowhere. The interaction this author would kill to see more of, written out. People die, obviously. Look at the characters.


She'd thought, the noises he made, that he would wake for nothing short of the end of the world. Creeping on her toes, she curled her fingers silently around a rock the size of her own head and hauled it up, biting her lip not to make a sound. She crept, crablike and shoulders aching, toward the lump that was the Hound's sleeping form. She would drop the rock on his head and squish his stupid brains on the ground.

Then one gray eye opened, slitlike and staring at her. _Run, _Arya thought, _two more steps and it'll be done. _But she was frozen, unmoving, hating that she still felt a little scared.

Then he made a strange sort of coughing sound, and it took her a few moments to realize that he was laughing. That made her angry again, but he'd already tugged the rock out of her hands and pitched it into the woods with embarrassing ease.

"If you touch me I'll bite you," Arya snarled. He seemed more amused at that.

"If you're going to kill someone do it right," he told her, mouth twisting slightly, and she couldn't tell with his face if it was a snarl or a smile. "And if you try to kill me again I'll tie you in knots. Just keep that in mind."

"I'm not afraid of you," Arya said defiantly, though she was, a little, sometimes.

"The more fool you," he said, and did laugh at her that time. Arya curled her feet under her and sat on them, knowing she wouldn't go back to sleep. He raised his eyebrow at her.

"What're you waiting for? I'm not feeding you again."

"I'll watch," she said, stubbornly. When he was asleep again she could go find the rock and kill him properly. His laugh was like a bark.

"Because I trust you enough for that, wolf-bitch. I don't think so. Too many large rocks around here and I like my head the way it is, thanks."

"I don't," Arya retorted. "I hate you."

"Evidently." He stretched out his legs and leaned his head against a tree, eyes watching her the most visible part of his face. She could hardly even see his mouth move in the shadows. "Aren't many other reasons you kill a man. Unless you're me." He sounded amused, darkly, at that, as though there were some kind of private joke. Arya glared at him.

"Why do _you _kill people?" Like Mycah, she didn't say, because she bet he didn't even remember who Mycah was.

"Because I'm told to," he drawled. "Because I get paid for it. No better reason than that, wolf-girl."

"That's stupid," Arya said vehemently. "You're a murderer and a traitor and a _coward._" In just a second he stopped being relaxed, almost lazy, and was looking at her, eyes flat and stony.

"If you call me a coward again I'll beat the shit out of you," he snarled, and she believed him, so she shut her mouth. For a few moments, until he wasn't looking at her anymore.

"How would you kill someone, then, if you didn't have a sword?"

"Break their neck. It's not that hard if you know where to twist." The tone in his voice should have left her cold, but she almost sat up straighter, wondering if you had to be like the Hound to do that, built like a boulder and a half.

"Where? Could you show me?"

He turned his head and stared at her again, with that strange little mouth-twist. "_Show_ you? No. You are a little she-wolf. You're planning to kill someone else sometime soon? I can tell you now your hands won't fit around _my _neck."

It was a little galling that he didn't even seem to think she was a little bit of a threat. She'd show him. If she could reach his knife even a little _girl _could stick one of those in someone's belly, and she'd already done it once. "Yes," she said, defiantly. "I _am _going to."

He made that short, sharp, bark of a laugh again. "Fierce little wolf-bitch. All right. Who?"

"It's none of _your _business," Arya snapped. Raff the Sweetling. Polliver. Ser Gregor. The Hound probably knew all of them; he was just as bad.

He snorted, mouth twisting downward this time. "Fine. Man's kills are his own. At least you're not a braggart _and _an idiot."

She chose not to reply to that. "How else would you kill someone?"

"Not a bit like your sister, are you? She probably faints just thinking about blood." He laughed, and it was an awful, grim noise. "That's the surest one. Can't reattach a head, as I'm sure your father knows by now." He laughed again, and she hated him for it.

"What if I were going to kill someone like you and I couldn't?"

"Then you'd get a knife." His mouth twitched. "If you want advice from _me _take it at this. You're not fit to kill people. You think it's a brave thing or some shit. That you're killing people for the right reasons. There are no right reasons. Telling yourself anything else is just pretending." He leaned toward her, and she fought the instinct to move away. "Take this. Your father calls them _executions. _What the fuck is an execution? I _murdered _your butcher's boy. i_That's/i _what it is, killing people. And you're too much of a Stark to dare to be that honest."

"You don't know anything about me!" Arya snapped, balling her hands into fists. "I've already killed people. I _could _kill you. You're nothing but a stupid _dog._"

"You finally got something right," he snarled, pulling away from her. "Get up. If you're not going to rest then we might as well move. The sooner I can get rid of you the better. I'm going to take a piss. If you run you'll regret it."

"I hope you die rotting slowly," she snapped, and he snorted as he turned his back. If she had a knife she would have stuck one in it, but she didn't have a knife.

"You'll have to come up with a better one than that. I've heard that one before."

Arya wheeled and glared at the horse instead. She could have sworn it glared back. Briefly, she entertained fantasies of the Stark banner appearing through the woods, hearing her yells, and they would hang the Hound. She would watch him twitch and jerk at the end of a rope and laugh. Or maybe put his knife in his bowels herself, while they were riding.

He shoved her shoulder. "Move, girl. Or I will break your fucking neck." She bared her teeth.

"Not before I break yours."

**

He could have killed them all a thousand times and it would never be enough. He moved around the table, breathing hard. Stupid, to fight on so much wine and an empty stomach. Stupid, to fight alone against three of Gregor's men. Stupid to even come here at all.

At least he had nothing to lose. Dead, they couldn't take him to Gregor, and he'd force them to kill him before giving in. The blood was streaming down the side of his neck, but he didn't feel weak yet. Where was the girl?

No time now.

He stepped the wrong way and felt the sword slide into his thigh like a knife into raw meat. _Shit. _Backed into a corner, he brought his sword up, cursing himself for getting drunk. Cursing himself for a stupid fool and a thousand other things.

"Throw down the sword," Polliver said, "and we'll take you back to Harrenhall." Sandor bared his teeth, ignoring the fear that wanted to well up.

"So _Ser _can finish me himself?"

"Maybe he'll give you to me," said the one called the Tickler, with one of his nasty smiles, and Sandor heard himself growl.

"If you want me, come get me." Eyes darting around the room, he pinned the girl finally, standing there like an idiot. If she – but no. No fucking chance of that.

"You're drunk," Polliver said, and Sandor could have laughed.

"Maybe. But you're dead." The bench went over easily and the time it took his brother's rat to dodge that was enough to put a sword in his face and take most of his head away when he pulled it out. One dead. That left one more, and that one was backing away.

The she wolf stabbed him in the back. Sandor hadn't heard or seen her move, but she pulled the knife out and stabbed him again, almost yelling his bloody questions. He leaned on the table and let her go at him.

Sandor wanted to laugh. He needed to wipe Polliver's brains off his sword or it would rust. More.

His head started to throb.

The girl was still sticking the Tickler, even though he was on the floor, dead. Vicious little she-wolf. That thought was almost affectionate. He was going soft.

If anyone deserved to be killed that thoroughly it was the Tickler, but Sandor didn't want to stay here. Limping over the dead bodies, he seized her collar and dragged her off. "He's dead, girl," he growled. "Enough."

Predictably, she looked up at him and snarled, eyes wild. He shook her once and set her on her feet. "One more," he told her. Polliver's squire was blubbering and he just started more when Sandor looked at him. He let his mouth twist. "That one's yours."

He half expected her to stab him, and wasn't sure he could stop her. She didn't. He leaned on a chair and watched the squire cry about girls and his father and didn't even try to feel sorry for him. Anyone who took up with Polliver deserved a knife in the belly.

She'd taken – something, not quite a sword, more than a dagger, off Polliver's body. It fit in her hand like it was supposed to be there, and for some reason she looked at him, like she wanted _him _to say something.

"Do you remember where the heart is," Sandor asked her, because he couldn't think of anything else. She nodded, and the blade between his ribs finally stopped the boy's whining.

Trying to stand up straight, his legs went weak, and he caught himself on her shoulder, head no longer pounding so much as spinning, and his leg hurt like seven bloody hells. Damn them. Damn them all, the she wolf and Gregor's men both.

He couldn't mount Stranger by himself. It seemed like all he could do was bleed. Slumping in the saddle, he heard the she wolf ask. "Where are we going?"

_We, _Sandor thought. _When did it become 'we_'? "Shut up," he said absently. Even if there were ships at Saltpans, likely the road to the Eyrie was already frozen. The girl had said her brother was on the Wall, but he had no money and like as not they'd – _he'd _– die trying to get there.

If he left the girl he could move faster. She would probably kill him in his sleep given half a chance anyway. He could feel the blood starting to run down his leg. "Move," he snarled, slurred. She moved.

It didn't matter where they went, Sandor thought, bleakly, as long as he stayed on the bloody horse long enough to get there.

It would be so fucking _stupid _to die now.

**

She rolled over with the bunk in the night and looked at the ceiling of her cabin. The ship rocked and swooshed with the waves, but she was used to it by now. _Valar morghulis. _She whispered it to herself every night before she went to sleep, after the list.

Arya wondered if she was allowed to take Sandor's name off the list, now. But she didn't know he was dead. She hadn't seen him die, did it count? She hadn't seen Joffrey die either, though. She thought of him as she'd last seen him, lying against a tree and cursing at her to kill him.

Because he'd asked for it, she hadn't.

_That's how you give the gift of mercy, _he rasped at her, wiping a short knife on a dead man's cloak. _That's one way, _she had responded, defiantly, and he had looked like he wanted to laugh at her. Just as bad as them.

She rolled over again and thought more. She'd seen him cry twice. Once after the fight with Beric Dondarrion, she remembered, the skin sloughing off from the burns as he begged for help. And again, just before she left. Just because he was hurting. That was stupid. Everybody hurt. Arya'd been hurt loads of times, and she'd never cried. He'd said it, too, that weak people died to make room for the strong.

Would it have been better to kill him like he'd asked?

He was probably dead by now anyway.

She imagined the Mountain finding the Hound there, with his remaining men, and the awful sound of his laugh, and even though she'd never thought she would, she felt a little sorry for the Hound, knowing that the panicked, cornered look in his eyes would be just like when his arm was burning.

Why did it matter? Arya turned over and tried to go back to sleep. _Valar morghulis. _


End file.
